DASH to Australian dollar exchange rate

The growth, purchase opportunities and brief history of Dash

Digital Cash - or simply, Dash - was worth 21 cents in early 2015, but today its value has stabilised well above US$1,000. If you had safely stored a few Dash tokens in a wallet a few years ago, you would have thousands of dollars today.

However, Dash’s market price fluctuates rapidly - as any other cryptocurrency does. For instance, on 20 December 2017 Dash’s price peaked at around US$1,600. Just two days later, on Dec 22nd, the market value dropped below US$1,000 for a few hours.

Although Dash is worth a lot more lately than it was a year ago, this does not mean that the price will keep growing. Let us review the reasons why this cryptocurrency has positioned itself around the 10th place in the market capitalisation ranking.

How much could Dash be worth in the future?

According to the records, Dash hit an all-time historical record Price of US$1,660 on 21 December 2017. Since then, the token price has been progressively decreasing under US$800 by the third week of January 2018.

The steepest price growth started in early November 2017, when Dash surpassed the US$500 price for the first time ever. After that, the token value has fluctuated within a range of $200 - $300 in 24 hours in most cases.

This volatility makes it impossible to forecast the behaviour of this digital asset in the future. Hovering around the 10th position for months according to the cryptocurrency market capitalisation rankings, Dash has remained within the top 15.

Dash was worth around US$12 in January 2017. By the end of that year, the cryptocurrency had stabilised in the $1,000-to-$1,100 zone. However, the cryptocurrency soft recession of January 2018 has lowered the token value by 30%.

Only in November 2017, this digital asset increased its market price from around $300 to $750. The following month Dash value fluctuated above the $1,000 value. The most volatile week was 17-24 December 2017 with repeated oscillations of $400.

In 2017, the Digital Cash ecosystem proved to have an internal infrastructure capable of sustaining growth. Despite the agitated entry into the market that this digital asset went through in 2014, the market capitalisation has increased progressively.

In fact, Dash is the rebranded form of the original XCO – which was released in January 2014. In February of that year, that cryptocurrency was renamed Darkcoin, which was to be the actual predecessor token of Dash.

Since March 2015, Digital Cash has taken over to consolidate as the stable project of its decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO). The community of users and developers vote about the course of action for this crypto environment.

As of January 2018, this cryptocurrency has a market capitalisation above US$6.1 billion with over 7.8 million of circulating tokens out of the 18.9 million maximum that this system allows to mine.

Could the price of Dash keep increasing?

It would be too optimistic to think that Dash’s value will keep rising to the skies forever. The past tendency of this token price cannot guarantee for any future behaviour due to the volatility of the cryptocurrency market.

There are external factors which affect notably in the token price, such as the user’s interest in the token, political changes, cryptocurrency exchanges, etc. The complexity of the relations among these factors renders the market value unforeseeable.

Digital Cash was initially a bitcoin fork but nowadays the infrastructure has evolved far beyond its starting point. This token has become a self-funded ecosystem for supporters and developers - in fact anyone contributing to the Dash network to earn tokens.

Dash has a self-funding ecosystem. Unlike bitcoin or most cryptocurrencies, Dash has a community of users and developers who are funded by the system itself with a fraction of the recently-mined tokens. The development team currently holds +30 full-time employees.

Dash has lower fees than bitcoin. The two-layer Dash network allows the possibility of instantaneous transactions (InstantSend) and enables more privacy (PrivateSend) through the self-sustained master nodes.

Dash is based on an active community. There is also a self-government system through the internal voting system to solve disputes. The Dash community can decide about anything, from reducing costs to hiring a new development team by voting.

Plus, to have a vote in the Dash network, you’d need to own a master node. Considering that each of these nodes is worth 1,000 Dash tokens permanently, there is no easy way to manipulate the networks’ will by introducing votes.

Dash is the true “Digital Cash” Nakamoto once dreamed of

Dash enables a more efficient and secure means to make transactions as the payments can be processed within seconds. Moreover, the security of the user’s identity is in safer hands than it is with other cryptocurrencies.

PrivateSend. Using a random bunch of the master nodes in the network, Dash users can effectively mask their identity. Given the permanent cost of 1,000 Dash tokens to own one master node, there is no cheap workaround to discover the identity of this cryptocurrency’s users. In January 2018, there were 4,755 active Dash master nodes out of the 4802 maximum.

InstantSend. Dash transactions occur in seconds. That is as instantaneous as it can go, right? You could literally buy drinks in a vending machine with Dash tokens. There are no waiting times with this cryptocurrency thanks to the master nodes locks onto the input and outputs of the tokens. This system also prevents double spends.

Governance functions. Dash’s two-tier level structure makes it possible for people who provide value to the network to earn tokens as a salary. The mining level gets 45% block rewards, and so does the master node tier (servers with at least 1,000 tokens as regular funds).

The 10% left is stored in the budget to self-sustain the whole system whenever it is required; like saving for a rainy day. In fact, anyone can earn money contributing to the Dash’s network even with a minimum contribution.

Is Dash really private due to PrivateSend?

The PrivateSend service was originally named DarkSend and was rebranded in June 2016. It operates as a mixing service which combines transactions from various users in one single operation with several outputs.

Because of this process, there are equally-valued operations which cannot be directly identified by quantity. Thus, the Dash network ensures an additional layer of privacy for the users that other cryptocurrency networks cannot provide.

Also, Dash becomes fungible due to this feature: it is possible to mix the tokens into the same denomination despite the wallet of origin. Enforcing the same value for all the Dash tokens makes it simpler to process the transactions.

When you use a one-tier cryptocurrency system, you have a higher risk to be identified through spoofing techniques. As this study posted in Coin Center explains , it is possible to trace back the identity of a bitcoin user – although it is not easy to do by the layman.

Dash’s additional privacy layer makes it nearly impossible to pinpoint someone’s identity from within the cryptocurrency network. You should own a large number of master nodes, and still require of luck to perform such action – which is not an affordable option.

In conclusion, Dash is a more private option than bitcoin due to the two-layer network. You should not forget that there is no such thing as the perfect system which cannot be reverse-engineered.

A short history of Dash prices

According to Coinmarketcap, Dash opened with a historical value of US$0.21 in February 2014. That year, the tokens’ prices peaked at almost $20, but the market price by the end of 2014 was no more than $2 per token.

From that moment, the Dash ecosystem has evolved in all the possible directions accounting for growth: setting up servers, hiring a dedicated development team and hearing the community to solve disputes.

Some Dash enthusiasts have already pointed to the ambitious US$2,500 per-token price goal, which could be a reachable record if highly-influential investors from Wall Street decide to get involved with this cryptocurrency.

2014: The XCO and Darkcoin era

When this cryptocoin was launched, it was a fork of the bitcoin without additional features. A few months later, the development took over to boost the potential of this digital asset. From that point, Dash forever departed from its predecessor. The name Darkcoin was meant to highlight the anonymity of the users.

2015: Digital Cash was born

Regarding the market price, the year 2015 does not seem like a great step forward. However, Dash took over as the brand name of the project and the basis of the development was set during those months.

2016: Token price grew steadily

During 2016, the value of the tokens stabilised above US$10. The mining grew steadily during these months, and the per-token market price fluctuations did not break that tendency. The most exciting year in the cryptocurrency sector was to come.

2017: Skyrocketing in the market

The year that revolutionised the cryptocurrency world from A to Z. Bitcoin led the rapid growth, but other serious projects such as Dash, also profited from the worldwide interest. By the end of that year, the market cap remained around the 10th position in the rankings.

This cryptocurrency reached a US$1,000 price per token for the first time on 16 December 2017. Dash reached the yearly record market value of US$1659 on Dec 21st. Some days after that, the token value dropped nearly 30% due to recurrent sales by the users who were profiting from the higher prices.

Who could have forecast such a rapid growth when Dash was released at the price of 21 cents? The market capitalisation data places Dash in the 12th position by the end of January 2018.

If you are interested in learning more about cryptocurrencies, you can learn more about wallets in this post.